Carol Anne Connolly
Answering echoes
Carol Anne Connolly's work is influenced by time spent in the Mid Atlantic on a scientific survey led by the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES), University College Cork.
Her research was informed by conversations with marine scientists while at sea, the writing of marine biologist & conservationist Rachel Carson (where the title of the work comes from), and technology that employs sound for scientific research. With a particular interest in ideas that relate to our connection, perception and understanding of deep water landscapes, Connolly collaborated with INFOMAR, Ireland’s national seabed mapping programme, at the Marine Institute, Galway. Utilising INFOMAR's three-dimensional representations of the Irish seabed, generated by multi-beam acoustic technology, the artist has composed sonic portrayals of the ocean landscape using photoelectronic synthesisers, a technology that turns imagery into sound. The artist employed a virtual version of the ANS synthesiser; a musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin in 1937 and used by Soviet composers, including Edward Artemiev for the score of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris.
Answering Echoes takes the form of an immersive experimental sound installation, with sonic representations of the seabed landscapes prompted by the movement of the viewer around the space.
Thanks to:
Fabio Sacchetti & the INFOMAR team, Rosemarie Butler & Stephanie Ronan of the Marine Institute.
Prof Andy Wheeler, Dr Aaron Lim and Luke O'Reilly of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES), UCC.
Bosun Frank Kenny and all the crew of the RV Celtic Explorer.
Ambisonics Ireland.
Carol Anne Connolly's work examines the development of current cultural, civic and social ideas relating to place. She employs a variety of mediums, strategies and techniques to produce work that reimagines or represents ideas pertaining to contemporary landscapes and environments. Her approach to making work develops into interdisciplinary, socially engaged and collaborative projects and has involved working with diverse communities and individuals ranging from ghost estate residents, physicists, NGOs, farmers, copyright law academics to skratch musicians.
Recent projects include Gather, Solo Project, Alter/Rurality3 Conference, Connemara, Nad r na Teanga/The Nature of Language; Solo Show, LHQ Gallery, County Library Headquarters, Cork, Seachange; TULCA Festival of Visual Art, Galway, Planting a Seed; Percent for Art Commission in collaboration with Augustine O'Donoghue, Co. Limerick, The More Closely You Look at the World, the More Distant it Becomes, solo show at The Black Mariah Gallery, Triskel Art Centre, Cork, Festival Interceltique de Lorient; Group Show, France, For I is Someone Else; solo project at Pallas Projects, Dublin and WerkStadt Kulturverein e.V, Berlin.
Connolly graduated from the National College of Art and Design with an Honours Degree in Fine Art Sculpture (2006) and was awarded an MA in Arts Policy and Practice through the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway (2011).
Giclée prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, 600 x 600mm.
Ambisonic sound installation, 2020.